Kazim Beceren said the fire safety systems were designed to take three minutes to evacuate each floor, and a facility with more than 200 people could be evacuated in 15 to 30 minutes under ideal conditions.
According to the head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation, when an alarm goes off, the person in charge of the fire control dashboard should check the location.
If there is no indication of a false alarm, or if a second detector sends an alert, the fire alarm will normally go off throughout the building.
In a properly installed system, people are then directed by an announcement to the nearest fire exit with flashing lights for the hearing impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.
As a fire can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are seen as very important for early intervention.
It is also a backup power source. According to fire protection regulations, signs indicating emergency exits and lights indicating the routes to these exits must work for one to three hours even in the event of a power outage.
The Union of Engineers and Architects in Bol said in a statement that “an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory” in buildings of this size.
“Photos on the hotel’s website show that the automatic sprinkler system that was supposed to be installed in 2008 was not installed. Because of this failure, the fire spread quickly and there were casualties.”
BBC Turkish was unable to independently confirm the claims about either the building’s wood cladding or the hotel’s fire-fighting system.
